Books
A Closer Look at the Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act at Thirty,
vols. 1 and 2. Dale D. Goble, J. Michael
Scott, and Frank W. Davis, eds. Island
Press, Washington, DC, 2006. 432 and
450 pp. $35.00, $40.00 (ISBN
9781597260084 and 9781597260558
cloth).
n this two-volume analysis of Ameri-
I can policy governed by the Endangered
Species Act (ESA), contributor Steven L.
Yaffee notes that the law “has funda-
mentally changed natural resource deci-
sionmaking in the United States.” Few
would disagree with that assessment,
which is reason enough to make this re-
view of what has been—and could have
been—achieved under the ESA in its 30-
year existence well worth reading.
The Endangered Species Act at Thirty,
edited by Dale Goble, Michael Scott, and
Frank Davis, offers a comprehensive
overview of the ESA’s effectiveness in sav-
ing and recovering species and habitat,
and examines the interplay of the law
with science, land-use planning, and pol-
itics. The first volume, Renewing the Con-
servation Promise, looks at the available
data to evaluate the effectiveness of
species recovery and habitat protection
efforts over the past three decades, and in-
cludes an extensive discussion of how
policy could be improved in the years to
come. The second volume, Conserving
Biodiversity in Human-dominated Land-
scapes, contains more in-depth analysis
of specific areas of endangered species
conservation.
Editor Dale Goble is a professor of law
at the University of Idaho, Mike Scott is
a professor of wildlife biology at the Uni-
versity of Idaho, and Frank Davis is a
professor in the Donald Bren School of
Environmental Science and Management
at the University of California, Santa Bar-
bara. Chapter authors include some of the
most respected experts on endangered
species science, American wildlife law,
and biodiversity policy, many of whom
have decades of experience with the ESA.
626 BioScience • July/August 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 7
A lot has changed since President
Richard Nixon signed the ESA into law
with unanimous support in the Senate
and opposition from only 12 members of
the House of Representatives. Since that
time, the ESA has been amended by Con-
gress repeatedly, barely escaping many
drastic revisions that would have under-
mined species protection. Individual
chapters address population growth and
habitat loss over the last 30 years, but a
chapter providing an overview of land
conversion, forest loss, resource con-
sumption, and explosive growth in in-
vasive species problems would have been
a useful accompaniment to the back-
ground on the law’s political history.
Several authors make clear their
belief—with many chapters providing
quantitative or qualitative evidence to
support their assertions—that federal
agencies charged with implementing
the ESA have repeatedly missed
opportunities to conserve and recover
many more species.
The first two-thirds of volume 1, es-
sentially a report card on what has been
achieved since the ESA took effect, pro-
vides an excellent background on en-
dangered species in the United States.
Some chapters offer new insights and
data on the ESA that are unavailable else-
where. For example, D. Noah Greenwald
and colleagues review the history of
species listings, and the analysis by Robert
P. Davison and colleagues provides in-
sights into the effectiveness of the Na-
tional Wildlife Refuge System in
protecting threatened and endangered
species. Several authors make clear their
belief—with many chapters providing
quantitative or qualitative evidence to
support their assertions—that federal
agencies charged with implementing the
ESA have repeatedly missed opportuni-
ties to conserve and recover many more
species. The case studies in these chapters
make for interesting reading. Michael J.
Bean and other authors describe the
bizarre conditions and sometimes daunt-
ing procedural requirements that US Fish
and Wildlife Service and National Marine
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Fisheries Service staff have imposed on
other government and nongovernment
partners attempting to initiate recovery
efforts.
Many authors discuss the ESA’s short-
comings as if those inadequacies were
somehow specific to this one national
law. There cannot be many such broad
and ambitious measures that have not re-
sulted in similar failures to achieve lofty
goals. Whether such efforts addressed
the War on Poverty or species protection,
these disappointments provide fuel for
critics’ attempts to throw the baby out
with the bathwater. Many chapters in
volume 1 make clear the positive im-
pact the ESA has had in helping save
and recover species—so this baby is
worth keeping.
I found the second volume the more
thought-provoking of the two, because
the content addresses the significantly
different world in which the ESA now
operates. The United States is home to-
day to almost 90 million more people,
with 120 million more cars. Moreover,
according to the US Department of
Agriculture, the amount of newly de-
veloped land has swelled by more than
35 million acres (14 million hectares)
during the last 20 of those years. We
truly live in a human-dominated land-
scape where anthropogenic effects of
everything from invasive species to cli-
mate change affect almost every part of
the country. Chapters in volume 2 dis-
cuss hybridization policy, ecosystem ser-
vices, conservation banking, efforts to
define and protect distinct populations,
and a host of other significant policy
issues and opportunities.
Housing and other development ac-
tivities have given rise to what are prob-
ably the greatest challenges to efforts
to maintain the ESA’s protections in
www.biosciencemag.org

Congress and implement them on the
ground. The chapters by David L. Sund-
ing and Thomas A. Scott and colleagues
are especially fascinating. The authors
used in-depth analyses of case studies of
conflicts between development and en-
dangered species to generate insightful re-
flections on land-use policy. Together
with Holly Doremus’s review, “Science
and Controversy,” these three chapters
alone make this volume worth acquiring.
Doremus’s contribution provides an ex-
cellent assessment of how science is used
and politicized under the ESA.
Missing from these volumes was a
soul-searching analysis of whether and
how scientists have responded to Amer-
ica’s potential loss of biodiversity by pro-
ducing the information needed to find
ways to preserve it. Again and again, au-
thors note that critical data are missing on
habitat, on the effect of land-use deci-
sions, and on the basic biology of species.
Shortcomings in these areas are typically
attributed to a lack of funding or politi-
cal will. However, with the exception of
a discussion by Peter Kareiva and col-
leagues in volume 1 about the Nature
Conservancy’s efforts to prioritize, collect,
and use the best information available, it
is clear that scientists have not collec-
tively established their own set of re-
search and data collection priorities. I
believe that this kind of introspection
would have been an important addition
to this work.
A minor weakness of this book de-
rives from the strength of the authors,
who have such expertise in the ESA that
there isn’t always enough context to help
a casual reader grasp important details.
However, many other chapters—such as
the one by Mary H. Ruckelshaus and
Donna Darm in volume 2 on the use of
science in ESA implementation, or an-
other by Gregory M. Parkhurst and Jason
F. Shogren on incentives for private lands
conservation—offer enough background
and analysis for ESA novice and expert
alike.
This two-volume set was informed by
a conference on the same subject held
in 2005. Although the conference had
the explicit intent of influencing changes
in US government policy, it is difficult to
see where The Endangered Species Act at
www.biosciencemag.org
Thirty has yet achieved that specific goal.
The good ideas contained in this book are
scarcely reflected in Bush administration
policy, and certainly not in the 2005 leg-
islative effort in the House of Represen-
tatives to drastically reduce ESA
protections for species. A 2006 bill in the
US Senate, championed by Senator
Michael D. Crapo (R–Idaho), does create
tax incentives that implicitly reflect the
recommendations of Barton H. Thomp-
son Jr. in volume 1 for motivating private
landowners to become involved in species
conservation. Unfortunately, good ad-
vice often falls on deaf ears—a fact of
life and politics that doesn’t make the
authors’ numerous recommendations
any less insightful or relevant to im-
proving policy. Indeed, these volumes
deserve the attention of all current and
future practitioners of endangered species
law, policy, and science in the United
States.
TIMOTHY D. MALE
Timothy D. Male (e-mail:
tmale@ed.org) is a senior ecologist at
Environmental Defense, Washington,
DC 2009.
doi:10.1641/B570713
Include this information when citing this material.
UNDERSTANDING EVOLUTION
The Evolving World: Evolution in
Everyday Life. David P. Mindell. Har-
vard University Press, Cambridge,
MA, 2006. 341 pp. $24.95 (ISBN
9780674021914 cloth).
he world is changing. Every day we
T hear alarming reports of shifting
temperature regimes, rising sea levels,
diminishing glaciers, and dramatically
altered species distributions and abun-
dances. Concurrent with these large-scale
events are less obvious changes in gene
frequencies, some driven by selection
and others by genetic drift in diminish-
ing populations. Although doubts about
the reality of global warming are waning,
the debate over the outcome of genetic
July/August 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 7 • BioScience 627
Books
change in populations through time is far
from over. Most Americans do not accept
the fact of evolution in Earth’s history,
much less understand the mechanisms of
evolutionary theory.
David Mindell does understand how
evolution operates, as well as the impli-
cations of denying its role in compre-
hending our past, present, and future. In
The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday
Life, he applies his expertise to relate the
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role of evolution to everyday life, an os-
tensibly difficult task that he skillfully
accomplishes by linking evolutionary
mechanisms to familiar objects and ac-
tivities—for instance, by delving into the
origin of the components of French toast
and eggs Benedict at Sunday brunch, or
the family dog, or why flu shots have to
be administered every year.
Mindell has made a career of under-
standing evolution. He is a professor of
ecology and evolutionary biology at the
University of Michigan and a curator in
the university’s Museum of Zoology. His
research focuses on molecular evolution
and the evolutionary history of birds,
and he has applied the results of his stud-
ies to a wide variety of topics, including
conservation biology, coevolution,
genome evolution, and methods of phy-
logenetic inference.
It is Mindell’s phylogenetic approach
and his understanding of evolutionary
processes at multiple scales that make
this book so useful and provide the reader
with examples that range from the eco-
system to the genome. Although the dia-
grams of evolutionary relationships are
essential to his arguments and serve to
quickly acquaint the reader with the play-
ers, the relationships and distribution of
specific characters are not the final word
in his argument. Instead, Mindell dis-
cusses both patterns and the processes
Books
that are thought to be responsible for
them, going beyond evolutionary trees to
delve into the historical settings, biogeo-
graphical context, and timing of these
events in the history of life. It is this depth
of exploration that engages the reader,
and the diversity of the subjects provides
something for anyone interested in biol-
ogy and other historical questions.
Mindell’s presentation on the domes-
tication of plants and animals robustly as-
sociates the workings of evolutionary
mechanisms with familiar and econom-
ically important species, including dogs,
horses, chickens, wheat, coffee, and cot-
ton. Again, these examples are not limited
to the position of these organisms rela-
tive to their feral brethren; the author
also explores multiple derivations by dif-
ferent human lineages and the implica-
tions of the loss of genetic diversity, as well
as other unintended effects of human
selection.
Mindell provides an evolutionary view of pathogens. Whereas many past treatments
have focused on the evolution of pathogen resistance to drugs, Mindell’s phylogenetic
approach presents the characteristics, biogeographical origin, and evolutionary
innovations that have contributed to the virulent nature of these life-forms.
In the arena of public health, Mindell
provides an evolutionary view of
pathogens. Whereas many past treat-
ments have focused on the evolution of
pathogen resistance to drugs, Mindell’s
phylogenetic approach presents the char-
acteristics, biogeographical origin, and
evolutionary innovations that have con-
tributed to the virulent nature of these
life-forms. In addition, he outlines evo-
lutionary strategies to minimize the suc-
cess of these pathogens in humans.
Emerging applications of artificial selec-
tion in biotechnology and medical re-
search are also discussed, once again
conveying the power and promise of evo-
lutionary approaches in treating disease
and alleviating human suffering.
Although the causal relationship be-
tween evolution and biodiversity is ob-
vious, studies of biodiversity have not
always taken an evolutionary approach.
However, today there is little argument
that an evolutionary understanding of
628 BioScience • July/August 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 7
biodiversity has more predictive value
than estimates of taxon diversity based on
traditional alpha taxonomies, and that
research in disciplines as disparate as
ecology, biogeography, medicine, and
conservation biology is more robust
when evolutionary relationships are
known and taken into account. This is es-
pecially important when the research
products are used in decisionmaking.
Mindell’s treatment of evolution and
conservation addresses many of these
topics, and again reflects the breadth of
his research interests as he explores the
complex and integrated relationships of
genes, species, and ecosystems. He ad-
dresses the value of biodiversity in terms
of economics as well as human health,
but it is his weaving of natural history
data into an evolutionary framework that
underscores the new significance of these
data in contemporary approaches in
comparative and integrative biology.
I am always baffled at how some indi-
viduals can attack evolution and in the
next breath extol the virtues of free-
market economies, when both require
competition and are responsive to supply
and demand for resources. The obser-
vation of this similarity is not new,
and evolutionary biologists, including
Michael Ghislen and Geerat Vermeij,
have written on this topic. However,
many others are cautious about associ-
ating evolutionary principles (even as
a metaphor) with changes in human
culture and institutions because of the
lack of key factors such as heritability.
Although he is aware of these issues,
Mindell provides convincing examples
of the importance of an evolutionary ap-
proach in understanding several aspects
of human culture.
Examples of evolutionary change in
human culture include the historical re-
lationships of our various languages; the
origin, use, and extinction of words; and
the reconstruction of the history of me-
dieval manuscripts by tracking scribes’
transcription errors. All of these have
been elucidated before. However, Mindell
goes beyond these classic examples and
documents competition among clergy,
translators, and scholars for the selec-
tion of specific wording and arrange-
ments in various versions of the Bible. He
also uses cladistic methodologies to re-
construct the history of several of the
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world’s major religions, showing both
relatedness and convergence.
It is unlikely that reading this book
will lead a creationist or intelligent design
advocate to become an evolutionist.
Belief systems have built-in feedback
loops that prevent this kind of cathartic
behavior. Some fence-sitters may find
the numerous and well-documented ex-
amples of evolution, and the science that
underlies them, persuasive; perhaps they
will become more inclined to see and
understand the world in a less mystical
way. However, the major audiences for
this book are students and their teachers,
especially at the college and university
level. Freshman and sophomores in non-
major biology courses can gain an un-
derstanding of evolutionary principles
from the examples of the role of evolu-
tion in domestication, while beginning
premed students can learn about the role
of evolution in public health, and how it
continues to shape the diseases they con-
front and the treatments they will ad-
minister in their chosen profession. Both
of these audiences also need to under-
stand the role of evolution in biodiversity
and ecological interactions as they face
unprecedented environmental change
that will require them to make informed
decisions with their ballots and their
pocketbooks.
The incorporation of Mindell’s ex-
amples and arguments into college and
university courses is straightforward and
relatively easy. However, their usefulness
in teaching evolution below that level is
more problematic. If there is a short-
coming here, it is in the strictly college-
level presentation of the material and
the lack of supplemental material for use
in grades 6–12. There is no doubt that
middle and high school science and biol-
ogy teachers will greatly benefit from
www.biosciencemag.org
 Books

reading this book, but the demands of
their schedules, the lack of resources, and
misguided political pressure that requires
them to “teach to the test” rather than to
educate students will prevent many from
incorporating these excellent examples
into their curricula. This is unfortunate,
as it is at this educational level that the
greatest need exists and the most bene-
fit can be achieved in establishing a life-
long appreciation and understanding of
Since the steady rise of the philosophy of
biology in the 1970s, however, reduction
as a philosophical ideal has been out of
favor. In Darwinian Reductionism: Or,
How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecu-
lar Biology, Alex Rosenberg aims to re-
store reductionism’s good name. He has
his work cut out for him.
Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole
Professor of Philosophy and Biology at
Duke University. His previous books in
biological theories and explanations need
not and in most cases do not hinge on the
provision of theories and explanations
from physical science that show how bio-
logical phenomena are physical” (p. 4).
How is this possible? Doesn’t physicalism
entail reductionism? In his sustained
defense of reductionism in biology,
Rosenberg aims to force physicalist anti-
reductionists to come to terms with their
conceptual schizophrenia and to put their

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science. However, teachers are constantly
adapting, and one can hope that the
examples in The Evolving World will soon
be modified and used by science teach-
ers at all grade levels for the benefit of
current and future students and of the
evolving world in which we all live.
DAVID R. LINDBERG
David R. Lindberg (e-mail:
drl@berkeley.edu) is a professor in the
Department of Integrative Biology and
curator for the Museum of Paleontology
at the University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720.
doi:10.1641/B570714
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the philosophy of biology include The
Structure of Biological Science (Cambridge
University Press, 1985) and Instrumental
Biology, or The Disunity of Science (Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1993). The ful-
crum for his latest book is what he
considers the “untenable dualism” char-
acterizing much contemporary philoso-
phy of biology. On the one hand, virtually
all philosophers of biology are physical-
ists: They maintain that the universe con-
sists solely of physical things (e.g., matter,
forces, etc.). On the other hand, many of
these same philosophers reject reduc-
tionism: “They hold that the adequacy,
accuracy, correctness, completeness of
philosophical houses in order.
Antireductionists, of course, have prin-
cipled objections to reductionism. They
insist that whereas it is true that all bio-
logical processes are physical processes, it
is also true that biology has its own
unique and distinctive explanatory strate-
gies that cannot be framed without ex-
planatory loss in the terms of molecular
biology. For example, the Lotka-Volterra
equations embody principles governing
the behavior of predator–prey pop-
ulations that describe systems entirely
physical in their constitution, yet the con-
cepts of “predator” and “prey” nowhere
appear in the terminology of molecular

NOT A FOUR-LETTER WORD

Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to

Stop Worrying and Love Molecular
Biology. Alex Rosenberg. University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006. 268 pp.
$40.00 (ISBN 9780226727295 cloth).

eductionism is a four-letter word,

R from which all manner of evils are
supposed to follow—at least if you believe
some of its critics. To be called a reduc-
tionist is to be slapped with a term of
abuse signaling that one is a crass, unso-
phisticated epistemic leveler, perhaps suf-
fering from a bad case of physics envy. It
wasn’t always so. During the heyday of
logical empiricism in the philosophy of
science (the 1940s and 1950s), “reduc-
tion”was considered the summum bonum
of a philosophical account of natural sci-
ence (which meant, in practice, physics).

www.biosciencemag.org July/August 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 7 • BioScience 629

Books
biology. According to antireductionists,
even if there is a sense in which the be-
havior of the physical systems in question
could be explained in terms of the be-
havior of macromolecules, something
important would be lost in such a re-
duction. Ecology and evolutionary biol-
ogy, they would argue, are no more
reducible to molecular biology than are
economics and cognitive psychology.
This is not to deny that such disciplines
deal with purely physical systems. But it
is to be skeptical about the human abil-
ity to grasp important generalizations in
these domains framed solely in terms of
biologically interesting molecules.
Rosenberg considers the issue of reductionism in biology to have important societal
consequences: “A biological science that cannot be systematically connected to the
rest of natural science gives hostages to mystery mongering or worse—creationism,
‘intelligent design,’ and their new-age variants.”
In response, Rosenberg argues that
molecular biology “completes” evolu-
tionary biology. Why do some moths
have eyespots on their wings? In order to
misdirect avian predators away from
more vulnerable parts of their bodies.
These eyespots exist because they pro-
vided a selective advantage in the past
for individuals of this species. How do the
eyespots actually come about in individ-
ual moths? Through a complex devel-
opmental process involving genes—a
process that could, in principle, be spelled
out in a molecular biological account.
Rosenberg thus wants Darwinians to
love molecular biology. But Darwinians
already love molecular biology when it
provides a proximate explanation for
eyespots on moth wings, and especially
when it continues to confirm, and some-
times correct, the phylogenetic conclu-
sions arrived at by systematists attempting
to reconstruct the tree of life. What’s not
to love? On the other hand, if “reduc-
tionism in biology turns out to be the
radical thesis that ultimate [i.e., evolu-
tionary] explanations must give way to
proximate ones and that these latter will
be molecular explanations” (p. 43)—that
is, if reductionism entails the elimina-
tion of evolutionary explanations in fa-
630 BioScience • July/August 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 7
vor of explanations framed entirely in
terms of macromolecules—then arguably
there is less for which to feel genuine af-
fection.
Rosenberg never explicitly identifies
the intended readership of Darwinian
Reductionism, although in places (e.g.,
pp. 22, 57) he assumes that molecular
biologists are his audience. Nonetheless,
biologists will probably find the twists
and turns of the subtle argumentation in
support of reductionism difficult to ap-
preciate. Likewise, most philosophers are
likely to find the molecular biological
details throughout the text all but im-
penetrable. The book will most interest
those philosophers of biology who are al-
ready well versed in the issues discussed
in the book. This is not a large audience.
The question that is thus bound to
arise for potential nonspecialist readers is
why one should be concerned with any of
this. Interestingly, Rosenberg considers
the issue of reductionism in biology to
have important societal consequences:
“A biological science that cannot be sys-
tematically connected to the rest of nat-
ural science gives hostages to mystery
mongering or worse—creationism, ‘in-
telligent design,’ and their new-age vari-
ants” (p. ix). Granted, were Darwinian
theory either inconsistent with or just
systematically unrelated to other rele-
vant areas of science, this would clearly
represent a crisis in biology. Indeed, some
of the chief arguments against Darwin’s
theory in the years immediately follow-
ing its publication centered on its alleged
inconsistency with what was then be-
lieved about the nature of inheritance
and about the age of the Earth. But it is
less clear that our inability to “reduce”
evolutionary biology to molecular biol-
ogy, in the sense that Rosenberg deems
essential, is critical to rebutting the chal-
lenges posed by creationism and its in-
tellectual bedfellows. Arguably, unreduced
evolutionary biology has succeeded at
this task just fine. Ironically, should
Rosenberg be successful in convincing
readers that evolutionary biology is
grossly deficient in the absence of its suc-
cessful reduction to molecular biology, he
could be providing aid and comfort to
just those opponents of Darwinism he
appears to be most concerned to combat.
And this would be something to worry
about.
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TIMOTHY SHANAHAN
Timothy Shanahan (e-mail:
tshanahan@lmu.edu) is a professor in
the Department of Philosophy at
Loyola Marymount University,
Los Angeles, CA 90045.
doi:10.1641/B570715
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VAVILOV’S HARVEST?
Darwin’s Harvest: New Approaches to
the Origins, Evolution, and Conserva-
tion of Crops. Timothy J. Motley, Nyree
Zerega, and Hugh Cross, eds. Columbia
University Press, New York, 2006. 390
pp., illus. $73.00 (ISBN 9780231133166
cloth).
Charles Darwin’s work, including The
Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication, anticipated a wide range
of modern evolutionary research.
Darwin would indeed have been im-
pressed with the scope of the eclectic
set of papers in Darwin’s Harvest: New
Approaches to the Origins, Evolution,
and Conservation of Crops (even though
he might have had some trouble grasp-
ing the details, as he lacked an under-
standing of Mendel’s crosses and
statistics). However, Nikolai Vavilov’s
work has had a more direct connection
to this volume, and it would be more
properly called “Vavilov’s Harvest,” even
though his name is more obscure and
less marketable.
As recounted in Timothy Motley’s
opening chapter, Vavilov, who worked
from 1921 to 1940 in Leningrad, laid
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 Books

many of the foundations of crop plant re-
search. Among other findings, he docu-
mented the close relationship in origins
between crops and some weeds (oats and
rye were once weeds infesting barley and
wheat, as Vavilov noted by 1926). Vavilov
also developed detailed hypotheses about
the biogeographic centers of crop ori-
gins. He proposed eight of these centers,
although it is now argued that there are
at least a couple more, as shown in this
about and never tasted, like chayote (a cu-
curbit widely grown in Latin America),
oca (an Oxalis species grown for tubers
in the Andes), and breadfruit. Common
themes of the chapters included the use
of DNA markers and the importance
(and poor funding) of germplasm re-
sources.
The editors’ own research interests
seem (not surprisingly) to have influ-
enced some of the choices of topics. At the
pendices help to explain the biochemical
and statistical techniques and terms used.
The index is adequate, but could proba-
bly have usefully referenced more of the
authors and details cited in the chapters.
The references cited are handily in-
cluded with each chapter. It appears that
most of the literature reviews were com-
pleted in 2004. I was therefore surprised
that Norman Ellstrand’s highly relevant
2003 book Dangerous Liaisons? When

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volume.
Perhaps most important, Vavilov be-
lieved that the improvement of agricul-
ture was best achieved through the
collection of thousands of crop varieties,
and through their use in careful selective
breeding to develop better varieties. In-
deed, Vavilov pursued germplasm col-
lections with great vigor in the 1920s. It
was the selective breeding that caused
him to run afoul of Trofim Lysenko, who
believed (for example) that repeated ex-
posure of wheat seeds to cold would gen-
erate cold-adapted progeny. With the
support of Stalin, Lysenko replaced Vav-
ilov as president of the Bureau of Ap-
plied Biology (now the Vavilov Institute
of Plant Industry). Vavilov was later ar-
rested on charges of espionage, and trag-
ically died in prison in 1943.
In this volume, 36 authors contributed
to 15 chapters, grouped around topics
that probably would have pleased Vavilov:
“Genetics and Origin of Crops: Evolution
and Domestication,” “Systematics and
the Origin of Crops: Phylogenetic and
Biogeographic Relationships,” “The
Descent of Man: Human History and
Crop Evolution,” and “Variation of Plants
under Selection: Agrodiversity and Germ-
plasm Conservation.”
There are many interesting stories and
insights among these chapters. The col-
lection certainly achieves its goal of pro-
viding a broad sample of current research
on a diverse group of crop plants. Still, it
was never clear to me why these partic-
ular authors and chapter topics were cho-
sen. Were these the most recently
advanced or instructive cases? Why not
pineapples, cocoa, or bananas? Some of
the crops are of obvious importance, in-
cluding wheat, corn, beans, cassava,
potato, and sugarcane, but others are
plants that many of us have hardly heard
time the book was being written, Timo- Cultivated Plants Mate with Their Wild
thy J. Motley was associate professor in Relatives was apparently not cited, espe-
the Collum Program for Molecular Sys- cially for discussions on gene flow be-
tematics at the New York Botanical Gar- tween modern crops and their relatives,
den; he has since become the J. Robert although Ellstrand and colleagues’ 1999
Stiffler Distinguished Professor of Botany review article was noted. The book is
in the Department of Biological Sciences generally free of formatting errors.
Maize is not only one of the world’s most important crops but one whose evolution
has long been among the most complicated and controversial—and arguably the
most remarkable crop-breeding accomplishment of all time. Buckler and Stevens
piece together not only the fascinating story of how corn was selected from teosinte
by Native Americans over several thousand years but also the history of scientific
research that revealed this pathway.
at Old Dominion University. Motley’s My favorite chapter was that of Edward
research has focused on plant evolution S. Buckler IV and Natalie Stevens on the
and phylogeography in Pacific islands, origins, domestication, and selection of
particularly of plants in the family that maize. Maize is not only one of the
includes coffee. Nyree Zerega and Hugh world’s most important crops but one
Cross are Motley’s former students, with whose evolution has long been among the
interests that include the origins (and most complicated and controversial—
present diversity) of breadfruit and chay- and arguably the most remarkable crop-
ote, respectively. Zerega is the director breeding accomplishment of all time.
of the Plant Biology and Conservation Buckler and Stevens piece together not
Program at Northwestern University and only the fascinating story of how corn was
the Chicago Botanic Garden. At the time selected from teosinte by Native Ameri-
of publication, Cross was a postdoctoral cans over several thousand years but also
researcher at the National Herbarium of the history of scientific research that re-
the Netherlands, Leiden University. vealed this pathway. The difference be-
Unfortunately, as is so often the case tween teosinte, with only 6 to 12 kernels
with edited volumes, the chapters are in two interleaved rows, and domesti-
uneven in content. Some are written as cated corn, with cobs bearing more than
reviews that are broadly accessible to a 20 rows of kernels, is apparently due
wide audience, but others are much more mainly to just five regions of the maize
like technical journal articles, complete genome, most probably started from a
with materials and methods, and are single domestication event in the Balsas
probably of greatest interest only to spe- River Valley of southern Mexico. This
cialists. Some, such as the chapter on story is also a vindication for George
walnuts, seem to be mostly about phy- Beadle and his persistence in support-
logeny, with little real emphasis on crops ing his teosinte hypothesis from 1939 to
(the harvest side of the title). Two ap- his death in 1989, only mildly distracted

www.biosciencemag.org July/August 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 7 • BioScience 631

Books
by a Nobel Prize in biochemical genetics
and the presidency of the University of
Chicago.
I was also fascinated by chapters on the
evolution of the common bean and the
uses of landraces of wheat to investigate
the origins of European agriculture. Fur-
ther, the book highlights a number of
interesting conundrums in the evolution
of crops, such as the origins of sweet
potatoes in the Pacific and the develop-
ment of sugarcane.
As broad as this book is, it could best
serve as a prelude to a deeper discussion
of how we can link fundamental studies
of crop evolution, systematics, phyloge-
nies, and biogeography more vigorously
to crop improvement. Borrowing from
the book’s title, what are the detailed im-
plications of the origins and evolution of
crops to their harvest? A few of these
chapters showed a path forward: Buckler
and Stevens in discussing starch path-
ways in corn, Roberto Papa and col-
leagues in reviewing work (largely by
Paul Gepts) that shows two independent
domestications of beans and the impli-
cations for disease resistance, and Barbara
Schaal and her colleagues in describing
carbohydrate and beta-carotene variants
in cassava (a critical crop in Africa, where
average yields are only 8 metric tons per
hectare, compared with a potential of
80!). A thoroughly modern synthesis of
evolution into crop breeding would be a
book that both Darwin and Vavilov could
enjoy.
RICK ROUSH
Rick Roush (e-mail:
rick.roush@unimelb.edu.au) is dean of
the Faculty of Land and Food Resources
at the University of Melbourne, Mel-
bourne, Victoria 3010, Australia.
632 BioScience • July/August 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 7
References cited
Ellstrand NC. 2003. Dangerous Liaisons? When
Cultivated Plants Mate with Their Wild Rela-
tives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Ellstrand NC, Prentice HC, Hancock JF. 1999. Gene
flow and introgression from domesticated
plants into their wild relatives. Annual Review
of Ecology and Systematics 30: 539–563.
doi:10.1641/B570716
Include this information when citing this material.
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